Secret Justice Read online

  He might just as well have slapped me. My anger flared anew and my words came out in a rush of outrage. I jumped to my feet “What? You can’t even consider the possibility that Margaret could have murdered Ron, if that’s what you’re suggesting. Margaret loved Ron. They’ve been a devoted couple for more than thirty years. Even if she was capable of murder, Margaret wouldn’t have killed Ron. He was the only family she had. She cherished every day he had left. We’ve discussed it many, many times. No. That is just not a possibility. Not at all!” I finished with all the sternness I could muster, which is considerable.

  Hathaway craned his neck and looked me over as I stood towering above his head. Calmly, he said, “There’s no point in arguing about it until we find out the cause of death, anyway.” He stood and picked up his notebook, putting it back into the pocket of his now frivolous looking costume. Making it clear that he was not persuaded by my outraged defense of Margaret, he said, “Let’s just wait and see.”

  Sunday morning, I awakened to the aroma of freshly brewed coffee again, but it didn’t wield the same power over me as it had yesterday.

  After everything that happened during the past forty-eight hours, I had neither the physical, emotional, nor mental stamina to deal with Suzanne again now. I was supposed to be in training for the Gasparilla Distance Classic in three weeks. I virtuously decided to get my morning run finished first.

  I dressed quickly and let the dogs out ahead of me. Then, I crept down the back stairs, sneaking away like a mischievous child. I threw sticks in the water for Harry and Bess to chase, hoping to tire them out a little, as I stretched my achy muscles.

  We live on an island named Plant Key, after Henry Plant, the railroad tycoon who built our home and the island in the late eighteen-nineties. The island is eight miles around its circumference and I would do two laps today. For training purposes. But also to avoid my father, his child bride, and her child-to-be.

  I’m not a fast runner. It would take me about two hours to complete the sixteen miles. By the time I finished, Suzanne could be off somewhere, to the playground or something. One could only hope.

  I threw two sticks quickly westward and after Harry and Bess took off to fetch them, I started jogging eastward, toward the rising sun. If I get a head start I can sometimes stay in front of them for ninety seconds or so. Today, it took them only about sixty seconds to reach me, shake water all over me, and then leave me freezing in their wake as they bounded ahead.

  While I ran, heavily and slowly, trudging along the hard, packed sand of our beach, I dodged the cans, bottles and other trash left by yesterday’s party crowds. We’d need to clean up out here later.

  Too quickly, I realized I wasn’t dressed warmly enough. A cold wind blew in from the north, chilling me to the bone. I cursed my decision to sneak out of the house before I was properly prepared. The cursing didn’t make me any warmer.

  January and February are iffy months in Tampa. Sometimes the weather is perfect—sunny, clear, highs in the 80s—for weeks on end. Other times, it’s cold, windy, rainy and generally miserable. Which beats the Detroit snow, ice, and slush I moved away from, but miserable weather in the winter is a problem here.

  The first quarter of the year is a big tourist time all over Florida. Gasparilla preparations begin here in January and the whole month of February is one big celebration. Most events are held outside. So if the weather sucks, well, it spoils the party.

  Hundreds of thousands of tourists flock to Tampa for the Gasparilla Parade of Pirates and Pirate Fest. Dates vary based on criteria I’ve never learned. Celebrations continue for several weeks. Among other festivities, we participate in the Illuminated Knight Parade in Ybor City, the Distance Classic run for charity and, the Festival of the Arts on the last Saturday.

  Because we live on Plant Key, right in Hillsborough Bay, we have no choice but to join in all of the Gasparilla festivities for the entire month. That’s why the weather matters. We can’t just turn on the fire, curl up with a good book, a bottle of wine, and unplug the phone.

  Instead, our home is flooded with diners at George’s five-star restaurant.

  Tourists are forever coming over the Plant Key Bridge, thinking that they can just use our beach, stroll around the grounds, and make a complete nuisance of themselves. South Tampa residents know better, I thought, as I kicked the cans out of my path and farther onto the grass to keep them out of the bay. No point in polluting the water even further with this mess. We could always pick it up off the island later. The bending over would do me good.

  During Gasparilla month, we post a guard at the entrance to Plant Key and only allow guests with reservations, which are booked months in advance. For the invasion and parade, we have to hire private security because boaters pull up to our shores, beach their boats and invite themselves to our celebrations.

  Just one guard at the driveway isn’t enough. Most people who live along Bayshore Boulevard, Tampa’s long and winding waterside drive, stay home in self-defense since it’s impossible to go anywhere, anyway.

  And, to be fair, February is usually George’s best revenue month, so we need to keep the doors open. Gasparilla month alone accounts for a third of George’s annual receipts.

  Having company in the house, as we did this year, makes matters even more complicated under the best of circumstances. But when old friends call and say they’re coming, there’s not much we can do. Hotels are booked to overflowing, so our guest rooms are their only option.

  Allowing my thoughts to wander shortened the run considerably, and I was back to the house after the first lap in what seemed like a few minutes. My feet wanted desperately to turn into the walkway and go upstairs for warmth, but I forced myself to keep running until I was so far from the house that it was better to continue than to turn back.

  Which was a mistake, because then my thoughts returned to Dad and Suzanne. Suzanne pregnant. Dad, father to an infant. Unbelievable. Jim Harper, as much as I have come to love him and accept his failings, hadn’t been a great father to me. While Mom was alive he tried to be a good dad. But he was just not comfortable around kids at all and certainly not around a little girl.

  Jim Harper is really my stepfather. He married my mother when I was five. She was a widow at the time, so he’s the only father I have ever really known. Not that I know him all that well.

  He traveled a lot, brought me gifts and listened to my reading, but he wasn’t like any of the television dads I saw. I never doubted that he loved me, although he didn’t say so often. He was not demonstrative, not a “Mr. Mom” type at all.

  Eleven years after they married, when I was sixteen, my mother died. Jim was so overwhelmed by grief and absolutely unable to cope that he gratefully sent me to live with my mother’s best friend and her three children.

  That was twenty-three years ago, in which time we had forged an uneasy truce. I tried to understand how he could possibly have left me when I was already so bereft; he tried to comprehend how I could fault him for the way he dealt with his own grief. We both failed in our efforts.

  During our infrequent visits and phone calls, we did what all civilized WASPs do about everything—we didn’t discuss substantive matters and we acted like we had no issues between us.

  But we both knew we did.

  Dad as a new father was, well, something I’d never considered as a wild possibility. Yet, last night when Gil Kelley punched Dad on the arm and gave him the “sly dog” routine, Dad had grinned from ear-to-ear. His face lit up in a way I’ve seldom seen it. He looked positively radiant as he thanked Gil for his good wishes.

  George was quick to jump in with his congratulations, too. I had spit coffee all over myself and left the table abruptly.

  So far, I hadn’t actually said anything to Dad or Suzanne about the baby. I truly didn’t know what to say. I was tempted to just keep running, away from my home and my issues.

  But now I was really cold. The wind continued to whip around the island and was even worse o
n the west side as I came close to the house again.

  This time, although the dogs could have easily completed another lap, I stashed them in their outdoor run and trudged heavily up the back stairs. I wanted a hot shower and hotter coffee.

  If the weather didn’t warm up before the Distance Classic, I might have to rethink this plan. I was running for my favorite charity, Young Mothers’ Second Chance, a home for single mothers, and they really needed the money. But still, there had to be an easier way to capture the public’s compassion—and their cash, I though, as I tried to catch my breath and prepare to face my demons.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Tampa, Florida

  Sunday 9:30 a.m.

  January 28, 2001

  LATER, IN THE KITCHEN, I found George sitting alone with coffee and the Sunday papers.

  “Morning, darling. I hope I didn’t wake you,” George said, without glancing up, as I made preparations to brew my café con leche. He looked relaxed and happy, unshaven, hair mussed, like a man at home on a Sunday.

  Honestly, I thought, does nothing faze my husband? A man died downstairs last night and George seemed untroubled. I envied him his tranquility and I felt worse for Margaret.

  I couldn’t imagine my life without George. I was sure Margaret felt the same way about her husband. I wouldn’t believe she murdered him, no matter what Ben Hathaway suspected. Ben has been wrong before. I willed him to be wrong this time.

  “Actually, I’ve been out running. Are you the only one up?” I waited for the coffee and heated the milk in the microwave.

  “Your dad and Suzanne went downstairs with a few of the others for breakfast. I decided to stay here and read the papers. Great news about your new sibling, huh?” he asked me, as he folded the front section over and looked up briefly.

  “Sure.” I said, with all of the joy I usually display for trips to the gynecologist. “Wonderful.”

  “You don’t like the idea of being a ‘big sister’ at the age of thirty-nine?” George turned his full attention to me now, in his concerned and compassionate way.

  “Not really. Should I like it?” I snapped, a little more crossly than I had meant to.

  “Sorry. No need to be so touchy.” He sounded wounded. George and I rarely had personal disagreements, although we argue issues all the time. And it wasn’t his fault.

  I relented. “I’m sorry, too. I just haven’t quite sorted out how I feel about this yet. Can we drop it for now?”

  He studied me a few seconds, then changed the subject. “This is a great story in the paper here today about how Americans are constantly reinventing themselves.” He pounded on the paper with his index finger. “Did you see it?”

  I sat down at the table with him and looked at the story he’d pointed to in the front section of The Tampa Tribune. I read the headline aloud, “‘Change Your Identity, Change Your Life.’ Well, that would be one way to do it.” I sipped the hot coffee like a heroin addict shooting up. “Seems a little farfetched, though. Who would want to do that?”

  “You’d be surprised. Jim Harper is making himself over into a husband and father,” he said. I had to concede, so I nodded. “Think of people who change their names for professional reasons, like actors and musicians. Or just because they don’t like their names, they’re too hard to spell or too hard to pronounce.”

  He seemed like he was really getting warmed up. “Or maybe, they’ve done something illegal and they want to cover it up.” George sipped his coffee and grinned at me. “There must be hundreds, if not thousands, of reasons to change your life or your identity.”

  “Maybe,” I responded, knowing there was more coming.

  He waited a beat or two, like a stand-up comedian before delivering his punch line. “Like maybe your father has embarrassed you by marrying a woman half his age and getting her pregnant, and then showing up at your house when you have several hundred guests, to tell you the happy news?”

  The absurdity of it all did make me laugh, a little. “I don’t think that would be enough to make me change my name and leave town, but it might be a motive for murder,” I teased.

  George relented. “Read this article later. It’s quite interesting.”

  To please him, I reviewed the Tribune article more carefully. A former member of the FBI wrote a book telling ordinary people how to hide their assets and disappear. He was traveling the country giving seminars on the subject and had been in Tampa yesterday.

  Even with all the Gasparilla festivities, over 2,500 people had attended the guy’s presentation. The book had already sold over a million copies. Clearly, reinventing oneself was a more popular topic than I’d realized.

  When Margaret came into the room, I set the article aside to read later and turned my full attention to her

  She appeared rested. Although dressed in the clothes she’d slept in and with yesterday’s makeup smudged around her face, Margaret looked far from her best.

  “I can’t really believe he’s gone,” she said to George and me, after we’d gotten her settled and fortified. The dry bagel she chewed slowly and washed down with coffee seemed to strengthen her somewhat, but she still seemed an exhausted and bewildered shadow of dear, kind, petite Margaret Wheaton.

  Some lawyers have office wives who partner with them at work as their spouses partner with them at home. I had Margaret, my office mother. She cared for me, watered my plants, dusted my desk, kept me from working too hard and prohibited others from over scheduling my time.

  Margaret even stood up to the CJ, my pseudo-boss. She chastised me for antagonizing him, but when she thought he was out of line, she stood right up to her full height and went toe-to-toe with the old despot.

  From long experience, I knew Margaret had reserves of feistiness in her that would see her through her husband’s death, even if they weren’t apparent at the moment.

  “We knew he was going to die, of course,” Margaret said aloud. “We’d been preparing for it for months. He had a living will, made sure we transferred all the titles to my name. He gave me everything he had. So we were ready.”

  I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I said nothing. Neither did George.

  “We thought it would be the ALS. I’m glad he had a heart attack instead.” She sounded anything but ready or glad.

  George reached over and covered her small hand with his large one. She stared at the plain gold band he wore on his left hand for a while. Fresh, quiet tears, started down her cheeks again.

  “What can we do, Margaret?” I felt as anguished as she was. I’m not good at death. I don’t do funerals, wakes or memorial services, if I can avoid it. Death is a part of life’s circle, I know. I even sort of believe in reincarnation of some kind. But the loss and sadness the survivors feel when a loved one dies is just too hard to observe and revives too many bad memories for me.

  Watching Margaret’s grief confirmed my belief that she had not killed her husband. Nothing would make me believe it. Not even a full confession. Hathaway was just wrong.

  But Margaret had to know the theory the police were pursuing. So I took a deep breath and just said it. “Margaret, Ben Hathaway isn’t convinced that Ron just passed away.” She flashed me an alarmed glare that shook my resolve. “He’s checking that,” I assured her.

  “But?” she asked, for she knew there was a condition.

  I inhaled courage. “But he’s checking other possibilities, too. He has to. It’s his job.”

  The alarm on her face resembled a small child watching a car speed toward her beloved cat lying in the street. “Other possibilities? Like what?”

  George listened intently to my answer.

  “Well,” I stalled. “Ben has ordered an autopsy to see what caused Ron’s death.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s the law,” I said, as gently as I could. “They have to rule out other causes of death.”

  “Like what?”

  My discomfort grew as I tried to avoid explaining exactly what I knew Be
n Hathaway believed and would try to discover. “Well, like maybe suicide or homicide.”

  Now, Margaret’s expression was even more horrified. As if the car had hit her cat and splattered its body all over her face.

  I would have said anything to wipe that look off her face. I backpedaled quickly. “I mean, not that that happened here. Just, that’s the reason for the law requiring an autopsy.”

  Margaret shook her head, slowly, as if to say “No, no, no, no.” “Who would want to hurt Ron? He was the kindest man in Tampa. He didn’t have an enemy in the world. For all the years we were married, I don’t think he ever raised his voice to me, even once.” She kept shaking her head. “No. That’s not possible. No one killed Ron. It’s not possible.”

  Real tears and sobs began again, then, and I helped Margaret back to bed. She collapsed into sleep almost immediately. As if the world was too much to face.

  Grief is like that, I remembered all too well. It comes in great, overwhelming waves. And although grief subsides, like the tide, it comes again and again. My mother had been dead for more than twenty years. Yet, when I saw Jim Harper with Suzanne or worse, when I heard her called “Mrs. Harper,” fresh grief ambushed me again.

  Margaret would be all right in a while, but she’d have bad times, too, for the next few months. Maybe for years. I hoped Hathaway would wrap this up soon so Margaret could deal with her grief and move on with her life.

  Hathaway’s suggestion was outrageous, I thought again. The woman just lost her husband. She wasn’t a killer. I may not know everything, but I knew that much. Margaret didn’t have anyone to help her except me, now that Ron had died.

  It’s not that I’m all that experienced with killing. But I knew Margaret didn’t kill Ron and I wouldn’t let Ben Hathaway try to prove she did.

  Still, it nagged at me. Ben has been wrong before, but not that often. He’s good at his job. Tampa’s crime rate is declining and very few cases remain unsolved.